Android 15’s adaptive timeout could save battery life — here’s how it works

A new report reveals more information about Android 15’s adaptive timeout, which aims to extend battery life on phones.

Adaptive timeout appears to be an addition to the screen attention feature introduced with Google Pixel 4. Screen Attention uses your phone’s front camera to see if someone is looking at your screen. Once you register a user, the screen will not disappear even if the screen times out. This was a great feature, and it looks like Android 15 will make it even better.

Mishaal Rahman, writing for Android Authority, highlighted several code strings related to adaptive timeouts in Android Developer Preview 2 release builds. These strings indicate the “Automatically turn off the screen early when the device is not in use” setting. This means that when the user puts down the phone, the screen turns off instead of allowing the time set in the phone’s settings to elapse.

One thing that hasn’t been explained yet is how the phone will know if someone is looking at it, but it will likely use the front-facing camera. The only concern is whether to use Face ID technology when deciding whether to turn off the screen. If not, some questions arise regarding security. One last point is that this particular feature will be locked to his Pixel version of Android 15. This is because the line of code suggests that this feature is not part of Android 15. Open source version of Android.